Eleven Sweet Sci-Fi Locations

In Neill Blomkamp's upcoming sci-fi film Elysium, set to hit theaters on August 9th, and set in the year 2154, the world will be divided into upper and lower classes. The lower classes will live on the Earth's surface, constantly fighting to survive, and the wealthy will live on a decked-out space station, merrily oblivious to the struggles below. While this is a clear political allegory readily comparable to Fritz Lang's awesome 1927 epic Metropolis, for the purposes of this article I will ignore all the politics and even innate sympathy for the underdog to posit how awesome it would be to live aboard an ultra-wealthy spaceship devoted to comfort and not doing any work at all. Sure, your fellow man is languishing in an unpleasant and faraway place, fighting a distant war, but you're up here in posh, air-conditioned surroundings, drinking fancy drinks, and being entertained by a rotating bevy of hot future bodies.

Science fiction – going back as far as Plato at least – has always been good about juggling the idea of the Utopia, presenting an imaginable future city-state wherein all governments have reached an ideal place, the people are all living in peace, the classes are obliterated, and we can finally devote our lives to a 24-hour cycle of constant hedonistic indulgence. Sometimes the utopia isn't so ideal (most movie utopias are underlined by a streak of death and betrayal; four words: Soylent Green is People), but the movies can often make those future places seem so ideal. Those planets, those future cities, even some of those future bars, restaurants, and business establishments, make us yearn for a visit. Elysium seems like one of those places. Thanks to an over-active imagination and a working knowledge of sci-fi movies, we here at CraveOnline have come up with eleven more.